On MGM Springfield's casino floor, these people will be watching

Whether you drop it down the cuff of your pant leg or a friendly dealer pretends to move your coffee cup away from the green felt while plopping it inside, stealing one chip a day can be done in a myriad of ways.

"If a person's not greedy, and they can get away with one chip a day, they will do it for the rest of their entire career," Holly Cantell says, as the roulette wheel spins by her side. "That's why we keep track of them."

Standing in front of her, huddled around a roulette table laden with chips of all colors and intently watching Cantell is a class of law enforcement officers and gaming agents in training.

On the floor of MGM Springfield, the agents will be the ears and eyes of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, making sure state law and gambling regulations are being followed.

As the state's first resort casino readies for its grand opening, the gaming agents are expected to play a crucial role in protecting the integrity of the games, for both players and casino operators, and making sure chips don't leave the table unless they're supposed to do so.

And since Massachusetts is a late entrant among other US states in the legalization of resort casinos, there are a couple of different regulations that the gaming agents will be enforcing, taking advantage of what they've seen in other jurisdiction. (For example, in regulators' efforts to cut down on mischief, electronic or otherwise, you won't be able to place your cellphone on the gaming table."

An earlier class of gaming agents is already at work inside Plainridge Park Casino, which opened in June 2015. The $250 million slots parlor near the Rhode Island border has about 1,200 machines inside.

The $960 million MGM Springfield casino will have 3,000 slot machines, 100 gaming tables, a poker room and a VIP gambling area.

Encore Boston Harbor, a $2.5 billion resort casino owned by Wynn Resorts, is opening June 2019 just north of Boston.

Cantell, a supervising gaming agent for the commission, started her gambling industry career in 1981 at the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City.

Her first game was craps, and she recalls the smell of cigar smoke that wafted through the air, and sight of players spitting. "That was craps. Lots of alpha males," she says. "Very tough game."

She went on to learn roulette and blackjack, the two games the Mass. Gaming Commission agents and law enforcement officers were learning as part of an intense 7-week training plan. MassLive was allowed to observe the training for several hours on a recent Thursday.

The agents are picking up the ins and outs of baccarat, blackjack, roulette and variations of carnival games like four-card poke. And they're learning card cheats from the internationally known Sal Piacente, "The Hitman."

Sterl Carpenter, the commission's regulatory compliance manager, even donned a tuxedo before sitting down at the tables to teach the new recruits.

Cantell was a dealer and supervisor before she became a pit manager, and then moved north and briefly worked at Twin River casino in Rhode Island.

She now works with Bruce Band, the head of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission's gaming agents, who came out of retirement in New Jersey to take the job.

They'll field complaints from players about machines that aren't paying out, and if there's a criminal element to the incident, they'll work with the Springfield Police Department and state troopers, who were also at the training inside the Gaming Commission's headquarters in downtown Boston.

Players also have an established tip line they can reach at 1-844-303-8477.

The typical person who applies to be a gaming agent is male, a criminal justice major.

"I look for somebody with really good math skills, because odds and percentages are so important in this," Band says. "I honestly try to get a very mixed background, just because everybody brings something different to the table. One guy I just brought in is a software engineer."

Two to three gaming agents staff each shift, a setup that ensures nobody works alone and that the casino floor is covered 24 hours a day.

A senior supervising gaming agent works closely with the casino and State Police, checking on things like the cameras trained on the casino floor not having blind spots.

"Every day you come in, you find the unexpected, and that's what makes this fun," Band says. "And it's that way for my gaming agents, my supervisors. You have a cheating scam, you have to watch the film, and try to figure out what this person was doing. And it takes a lot of work, detective work so to speak."

They'll have to track groups of cheaters traveling the world.

"You'll get information they're in South Africa, then Singapore, and before you know it you're hearing they're in California card rooms, and you know eventually know you're going to see them," Band says.

Band recalls one instance of sophisticated scammers who took advantage of a glass front of automatic card shufflers: "We noticed a couple of guys were winning, but when the shuffle was going on, they were holding their arm like this, pointing their arms toward the shuffle. Video camera up his sleeve. It transmitted to a car in the parking garage, and what they were filming was a sequence of cards."

The shufflers don't have glass fronts anymore, he says.

To catch a cheater

Gaming agents in training and law enforcement officers at the Gaming Commission. (Gintautas Dumcius/MassLive)

To catch a cheater

To catch the cheaters, the gaming agents and law enforcement officers need to know how the game works, and particularly the procedures. For example, if a dealer uses the wrong hand to pull a card, that should jump out at the gaming agent.

And in a casino, everything is on film, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The video is kept for 30 days, allowing gaming agents to play it back and review.

Table games, like the ones that'll be inside MGM Springfield, draw in the characters and the high rollers who can bet $200,000 a hand, according to Band.

Unlike other jurisdictions, all of the gaming agents and other law enforcement officers work out of the same office. "I always hated it in New Jersey that the State Police were in one office, we were in another one, and after a while it becomes them and us, and the communication breaks down," Band says.

Employees from the Alcohol Beverages Control Commission are also involved.

"They teach us how to inspect IDs," Band says. "And I didn't know all these licenses had so many things on them. Simple things, like Maine, in the middle of the moose head, there's a happy face. And that's one of the counterfeitings you look out for."

MassLive got a glimpse of the agents and law enforcement officers as they went through the training.